The plight of half a million marginalized, brutalized people in Myanmar’s remote Chin State has become a test case for the UN agencies’ ability to address the deepening needs of some of Myanmar’s most embattled, isolated populations caused by the junta’s vicious repression.
The conclusion is clear. The UN has failed abjectly. It has failed the people of Chin State and millions of others across Myanmar.
Two weeks after Cyclone Mocha ripped through the northwest of the country, there is no UN presence on the ground in Chin State. Not a single UN truck has arrived, not a single aid worker. The UN is absent.
Even before Mocha, the situation in Chin State was dire.
Over 500 people, according to conservative estimates, have been killed in the state since the attempted coup in February 2021, through indiscriminate and disproportionate air strikes, summary executions, torture, the use of civilians as human shields, and mass arson attacks. Women have been raped and executed. Schools, hospitals and religious buildings have been deliberately targeted. Anecdotal evidence suggests poverty-related disease, particularly among Chin children, is on the increase, education indices are plummeting and infant mortality is on the rise.
Beyond its passivity in the face of this deepening humanitarian crisis, the UN has actively contributed to the misery of the Chin people and others by legitimizing the illegal junta and allowing it to weaponize aid by blocking deliveries to non-junta areas.
The UN is presenting two-week aid plans to the junta, even though Security Council Resolution 2669 adopted last year allows unhindered humanitarian access, whether the junta approves or not.
Adding insult to injury, heads of UN agencies have posed for photo-ops shaking hands with representatives of a regime responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. These photos adorn the pages of pro-regime papers distributed across the country in an attempt by the junta to bolster itself internally.
Perhaps most egregiously, an email leaked in March this year revealed that the UN had transported junta officials in UN boats with insignia removed, in order to organize a pilot scheme to repatriate Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, even though the UN refugee agency’s public position is that it’s too dangerous for these victims of the 2017 genocide to return. Similar returns in the past have seen thousands die.
But history is repeating itself. After the Rohingya genocide six years ago, an independent inquiry into the UN’s dysfunctional performance found “systemic and structural” failings and called for root and branch reform. Twenty-five thousand had been killed, three quarters of a million had fled to Bangladesh. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres accepted the findings of the so-called “Rosenthal Report” in full, and yet to date, its recommendations remain unimplemented.
Put simply, the UN has been instrumentalized and led down a path by the junta to the point where many Myanmar people believe it is actively enabling a regime that has declared war on its own people, and engendering a culture of impunity.
This compounds an even more fundamental failing: the inability of the UN to engage meaningfully and deliver on the two things that matter far more to Myanmar people than aid handouts: full political rights in the context of a federal democracy and accountability for the atrocity crimes being perpetrated on a scale not seen in Southeast Asia since Pol Pot unleashed the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror on Cambodia.
In the face of this, many Chin say to the UN: keep your humanitarian aid. Do not come to Chin State. Do not even attempt to. Do not conduct any negotiations with the junta about humanitarian access on our behalf. We have grassroots organizations working effectively with our most vulnerable groups. The UN is more trouble than it’s worth. Instead, channel humanitarian assistance to the local actors that are able to provide it to affected populations.
We also say to the UN Country Team: your engagement with the junta contradicts the political signals emanating from the two most powerful bodies at UN Headquarters in New York.
The General Assembly has twice decided to reject the junta’s credentials and leave the National Unity Government’s ambassador in his seat. The Security Council has also denied recognition to the junta and has accepted the credentials of the man representing Myanmar’s democratic government.
Does the UN Country Team’s not realize its modus operandi in Myanmar is contradicting these political signals? Does the UN Country Team not realize that by legitimizing the junta, its humanitarian programs are making it even less likely that the people of Myanmar will achieve their aspiration for full political rights and accountability?
UN agencies have failed to make the case to the donor community for full funding and as a result, the UN Humanitarian Response Plan for 2023 is just 10-percent funded. We hope this will force a thoroughgoing review of the UN’s entire approach.
Let us be clear. We reject unconditionally UN handouts. We demand the recalibration of the UN’s involvement in Chin State and perhaps beyond. We must reset the conversation and prioritize two things: political rights in the context of a federal democracy and accountability.
The departure of the UN’s envoy, Noleen Heyzer, in a few weeks presents an ideal opportunity for a conversation involving key stakeholders and we call on the Secretary-General and the United Kingdom as “penholder” at the Security Council to lead this.
Our message to the UN is clear: humanitarian aid can never be a substitute for rights, justice and dignity.
Salai Za Uk is deputy executive director of the Chin Human Rights Organisation (CHRO). Chris Gunness is director of the Myanmar Accountability Project (MAP).
